Rewritable paper developed

Costs less than 1% of traditional inkjet printing.

A new type of rewritable paper detailed in Nature uses water in place of ink to trigger hydrochromatic dyes on the special paper, allowing it to be read and the reused once completely dry.

The team notes that while 90 percent of business information is retained on paper, most is only read once before being discarded, resulting in a lot of waste paper and a lot of money spent on ink.

The paper can be erased and rewritten dozens of times with no significant loss in color quality, according to the paper. The researchers used a standard inkjet cartridge which was filled with water to print on the special paper. It could be used alongside traditional cartridges and paper in the same printer.

In the image above the rewritable paper is on the left, alongside the ame document printed using a traditional inkjet printer.